StartArt

About

StartArt turns every new tab into a quiet, full-screen visit to a museum.

Each time you open a new tab, the page fills with a single masterpiece —
drawn at random from the open collections of five world-class museums:

  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
  • The Art Institute of Chicago
  • The Cleveland Museum of Art
  • Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam)
  • Victoria and Albert Museum (London)

A small caption in the corner names the work and the artist, with a link
back to the museum's own catalogue page. That's it.

— No ads. No tracking. No widgets, weather, or to-do lists.
— No account, no sign-in, no API key required.
— Works offline once an artwork has been cached.

Tall paintings and wide panoramas are revealed with a slow, gentle pan, so
the whole work eventually comes into view.

Open the settings (gear icon, bottom right) to choose:

  • Which museums you'd like to see works from
  • Which categories — Painting, Drawing & Print, Photography,
    Sculpture & Object, or Other

Caching keeps the experience fast: the same piece stays for up to 12 hours,
and the museums' lists of works are refreshed weekly. The Refresh button
(↻ in the corner) gives you a new piece on demand.

All collection data is fetched directly from each museum's public API.
StartArt is not affiliated with any of these institutions; it simply links
back to their catalogues so credit and context stay where they belong.